project madness

six: //t wales

six: //t wales

Grayson came in the morning to deliver food and check the news on Pilot's computer. Once again, her video diary was interrupted.

I stopped taking blood samples from recently revived Mr. Muffins and threw out my gloves before taking a bite of my muffin. All of us got the same food. I hated banana muffins, but I had to eat it.

"Tatiana, do you have a sister?" Grayson asked suddenly.

My head snapped up. "What?"

Grayson whirled around, blocking the computer screen with his body. "Do you have a sister? A sister named Elizabeth?"

"Beth?" The name forced itself past my lips against my own will. That felt foreign to me. It had been years since I had even thought of that name, let alone said it. Beth. Beth Beth Beth. Beth, my regal, composed older sister. Compared to her, I was a punk. I had a sister still. I had a sister still. That wasn't a thought you had every day, but it certainly was one that woke you up.

"Eat your muffin," Grayson said, because I had stopped eating my muffin.

"I don't want to eat my muffin."

"Eat your muffin."

"What's this about Beth?"

"Eat your muffin."

I threw my muffin in the garbage. "What's this about Beth?" I thundered. Grayson attempted to stare me down, but I didn't lose his gaze. To my advantage, birds of a feather really do stick together - the ever loyal Pilot shifted the computer screen from behind Grayson and read quickly before he could notice.

"It says here that Elizabeth Wales is missing . . . abduction, possibly." She glanced around at me with wide eyes. "Your sister? I didn't know you had a sister."

She meant, she didn't know I had a sister who wasn't part of Project MADNESS with me. It had been clearly laid out for us in the original rules - no siblings. That just made things all the more complicated. You also had to be an orphan, but look at Beetle and me.

"Yeah, I also had a twin," I said, which I probably wasn't allowed to say, based on the murderous expression on Grayson's face.

"But . . . " Pilot glanced at Grayson incredulously.

"Tatiana is a special case," he growled, enunciating the last two words with venom. "Don't worry about your sister."

"I'm not worrying about my sister," I said. I was worrying about my sister.

"Tatiana," Grayson said quietly. "You didn't tell me you had a living sister."

Pilot's gaze flicked between us like she was watching a tennis match. I set my chin. "You never asked."

"I didn't think I would have needed to. That's something you should have told me."

"Really?" I glanced once at Pilot, decided she could hear this. She knew half of it, anyway. "After Daniel, you really think it would have even seemed like a good idea to me to tell you she existed?"

Grayson also glanced at Pilot, but he looked a lot more concerned than me. "I think it would have been at least an idea."

"Well, now you know. What does it say - "

Grayson moved to intercept me before I could reach the computer. "No family to distract you, Tatiana. That's why we take only child orphans. No family. Don't make us regret tweaking that for you."

"I didn't ask you to tweak it for me. I didn't ask you to take me into Project MADNESS."

A hush fell over the massive room. None of us - none of us had ever admitted that before, said we didn't want to be a part of Project MADNESS. It had its goods and bads. They weighed each other out. You couldn't decide. I couldn't decide. Could I?

"Would you rather," Grayson started testily. "still be schizophrenic? Or dead? Because you were on your way there, before Project MADNESS. Because before Project MADNESS, you would either have most likely killed yourself from the severity of your disorder combined with your external life, or you would have died in the - " He glanced at Pilot.

"Car crash," I finished matter-of-factly. "You have such faith in my will to live, Grayson."

"Car - ?" Pilot gaped. "You - "

"Yes."

"Tatiana, if you need to leave again - "

"No," I interrupted crossly. "What I need to do is finish these blood samples."

I could feel Grayson staring at me, but I ignored him and busied myself with the blood. Finally, he sighed and said, "It will have to wait. It's time for your blood samples, you two. Go get the others."

Pilot laughed. "Oh, Scippio is gonna love that." Blood sample day meant the monthly required 'therapy' session with our previously deemed psychologists that we were assigned to as soon as we were initiated into Project MADNESS. Scippio's psychologist hated him, and the feeling was mutual. I couldn't blame him too much, though. Scippio was easy to hate.

I, for one, loved my psychologist. First of all, old people are endlessly cute. Second of all, he was hilarious, and he was one of the few adults who actually liked me and didn't think I was a punk, even without being compared to Beth. He found my albeit punkness an 'adorable charm', to put it in his words.

Beth again. Funny how just a name could bring an entire person, an entire memory of persons back into my head like they had never left.

Pilot and I picked up the others in the common room in our way to the blood drawing room. I liked the place. It was kind of like the places where people go for chemotherapy, except we had walls of separation. Scippio told us to go ahead without him until Beetle back tracked and dragged him out of the common room with us. Pilot spun her cards. She kept giving me looks out of the corner of her eyes.

"How was Ivo?" I asked conversationally.

Scippio gave a dry laugh. "Can't get anything worthwhile out of Gollum."

"Don't call him that," Evie chastised. "That's mean."

"Besides," Fox added, "it's not like he's talking to himself. He thinks someone else is there. Outside of himself."

"Or something else," Beetle grumbled.

"Just shut up about him," Scippio snapped.

"You're the one who called him Gollum," I exclaimed.

"Well, he practically is!"

"Then, in that case, so are we."

Scippio stopped so abruptly Evie walked into him with a small 'oomph.' "What?" The rest of us stopped, too.

"It's not like they messed him up somehow," I said. "They couldn't change his disorder, that's why he's dissociative like this. It's not because of them. It happened his own way. So if you're calling him a Gollum, then we all would've been, if the procedure didn't work."

"You're gonna have some fun stuff to talk to your psycho about today," Scippio drawled.

"Don't call them psychos," Evie interjected. "That's mean."

Scippio patted her head and kept walking. "Let's go, Gollums!"

Cody leaned towards me. "Did he just . . . ?"

"Yup."

Fox shrugged and started walking, the rest of us falling in behind her. Cody sighed. "I wouldn't mind pushing him into a mountain of lava."

"Invite me to that party."

Even our jokes didn't mask the tension in the air.

Because everybody - exempt of Evie - knew that this was not just going to be a normal blood sample day.

This was the day we put away the white flags.